Science of Learning 101: Key Learning Sciences Concepts and How to Apply Them

Science of Learning 101: Key Learning Sciences Concepts and How to Apply Them

I recently had a conversation with a prospective client who was looking for a speaker. “Perhaps I could do a session debunking common learning myths, including learning styles,” I mentioned. We were on Skype, and her tone went from attentive to cold. “We spent weeks discussing how to adapt to learning styles in one of my graduate classes,” she replied. Since that conversation, I’ve seen numerous mainstream L&D sources discussing the “learning styles myth.” Not because people don’t have preferences for how they like to learn, but because research has clearly shown that self-reported measures of learning aren’t valid (see the resources below for more) and self-reports aren’t correlated with how people do learn. What does this mean, really? Should we design learning experiences and resources however we want? No.…